


Parenting 101

by Br0uillon



Series: The Lost Days [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 13:16:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15292338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Br0uillon/pseuds/Br0uillon
Summary: Sam and Cas have to face their greatest enemy yet...Someone that might change Jack's life forever, and against whom they're powerless.





	Parenting 101

**Author's Note:**

> Light Destiel mention

-Oh come on. 

Sam was certain he’d be alone for a while at least when he left the bunker early enough to be there when their newest greatest foe would make his long awaited appearance. And yet, the very first thing he saw as he walked into the small coffee shop was the common sight of an idiot in a beige coat, hidden behind the screen of Dean’s computer, borrowed for the occasion. He frowned. Did they had the exact same idea for keeping their concerned surveillance of this scary individual at least partially concealed ? And worst : didn’t they came to an agreement last night about not doing anything and letting things happen the way they should ? So much for team cohesion. 

-We are so screwed, he whispered to himself. He glanced quickly at the digital clock on the wall. Ten minutes. The enemy was close. Sam quickly walked to the only occupied table. 

-Scoot over, buddy. 

At first, Cas had a slight expression of surprise, immediately followed by a disapproving stare. And then he reluctantly moved closer to the wall, while Sam sat down next to him. 

-Oh come on, Sam. I can handle this.   
-No, we agreed not to do anything. 

Castiel looked positively annoyed, while Sam tried to hide behind his own laptop before realizing that two grown ups, in the middle of an empty coffee shop, mid-afternoon, both pretending to be absorbed by their own computer would make them look like the least skilled pair of hunters America has ever seen. Sam looked around to find some other solution, and it came in the form of today’s newspaper, left there by a precedent customer. He reached to the nearby table and grabbed the bunch of pages, and then proceeded to hide behind today’s news to observe the small room. This caused Cas to nod negatively. 

-Subtle. 

Sam stared at him with a slightly annoyed expression. 

-Shut up.   
-He’s going to spot us.   
-No he’s not. 

Yes he will, Sam thought. He totally will. 

The angel looked behind his shoulder to the entrance of the coffee shop, showing growing signs of anxiety and impatience.   
-So what do we do now ?  
Sam did the exact same thing. It caused the young barista stationed behind the counter to imitate them, suddenly aware of some kind of immediate danger those two seemed to be expecting anytime soon. This job sucks, he thought. I’m gonna get killed for serving bad coffee.   
-We wait. He’s going to be there soon.   
Castiel sighed.   
-What do we do if anything goes wrong ?   
Sam patted his side, right where his brother’s gun was placed. Castiel looked at the ceiling, trying to shake his urge to reply something far more snarky than needed.   
-We’re not gonna shoot him.   
-What do you suggest, then ?   
-I can smite him.   
-Oh yeah. That’s better.   
They exchanged a passive-aggressive glare. The angel shrugged.   
-You should have let me handle this on my own.   
Sam slightly shook his head.   
-We’re in this together.   
Cas sighed, defeated.   
-That’s true.   
Sam kept on looking around them, doing very few to alleviate the barista’s worries. Their eyes met for a second, as Sam smiled in the least confident way, and the barista tried to reply while fighting the urge to hide behind the counter and call 911.   
-We look suspicious, man.   
-Well at least you could order something.   
Sam was going to snap back at him, but then realized there was a cup right next to the computer.   
-Herbal tea, Cas, really ?   
Castiel’s annoyed stare discouraged Sam from any further comment, as he went to order something to justify his presence. 

The angel’s eyes were fixed on the clock in front of him, as the unusual and disconcerting feeling of being in way over his head started to devour him alive. Give me anything, vampires, demons, ghosts, even Lucifer, but not this. He and Sam could handle about anything, but this was a new one. Something they never faced before. And there wasn’t anything in any book of lore to teach them how to properly handle the situation. What could be the consequences of it all ? What was the worst that could happen ?   
Catastrophic, Cas thought. This could be catastrophic. The damages could be irreversible. Tragedy was lurking in the shadows, he knew it. Would Dean’s presence have changed anything ? He wasn’t sure about his missing friend’s competences in the matter. Nothing really allowed him to consider that he would have been of any help. But then again, Dean’s resources were often far richer and more brilliant than he expected, and his undeniable genius in getting his people out of difficult situations could definitely have helped him feel better. Or less like they were sitting on a bomb about to go off, and it could very well be nuclear. The angel took another sip of his beverage, surprised at how, strangely, the tea helped him to focus and calm down, and fully grasp at how immensely relieved he was at not being alone in this mess. All in all, he half expected Sam to come anyway…No, okay, he totally knew he would be there. In all fairness, he broke their agreement first. He was in no place to judge him. 

Sam sat back next to him as the clock strike 4, a large cup of a boiling coffee in his hand. Cas observed the smoking content of the cup for a second.   
-Worst case scenario, we can throw it at his face.   
Sam chuckled.   
-Coffee for a weapon ? That’s new. 

Cas quickly checked the whole room. He picked the perfect table, the one that would give them a clear view on any other spaces of the shop, whatever he’d chose. 

Behind them, someone entered the coffee shop, as the nervous barista threw to the customer a fast-paced, out of breath collection of words supposed to make him feel welcome, but elicited a surprised frown only. Sam and Cas exchanged a complicit glance, as the angel hid behind the screen and Sam pretended to read The Belleville Telescope…Without even noticing that it was upside down. Something that didn’t escape the barista’s nervous knowledge as he prepared a latte for the young man in front of him, who thanked him enthusiastically and sat down a couple of tables away from Sam and Cas. He was nervous, both hands around the hot cup as a way to ease his current stress. He looked distraught, his cheeks slightly flushed. Sam and Cas both leaned toward the space between the newspaper and the computer and narrowly avoided a head to head collision by less than an inch. 

That they remained unnoticed to the newcomer afterwards was a miracle, in the biblical sense of the term. 

Behind them, another customer entered the shop, causing both Sam and Cas to become far more tense. There it was. Their biggest foe. The enemy they never anticipated. Far worse than Lucifer, Michael and even Chuck himself. The most dangerous threat they’ve ever faced. 

Jack’s first date. 

**

48 hours earlier 

Three times over twelve hours.   
Three times, Jack nearly walked into a wall while circulating in the bunker’s main corridor. 

The first one, Sam witnessed it and took it for a mild case of tween distraction. Nothing to worry about. 

The second one, Cas saw happening, and shrugged it off as yet another one of Jack’s quirks. The kid was strange, that they all know it. 

The third one, they both observed. And it created something they didn’t experience yet : a mild case of parental distress. 

Could the grace-deprived child be sick ? While Sam distracted him with another random question about his current obsession with anything Star Wars, Cas analyzed the situation and ruled out any form of disease or health scare. The kid was fine. As far as he could tell. They did question what would have happened otherwise. Could Jack consult a regular doctor should anything happen ? How much of his difference could appear, in, say, a blood test ? His grace at least temporarily gone, he was, technically, a human, but there were still strange things he did that no one could explain. They both took it as a sign that his powers would eventually come back, hence proving the fascinating theory of the self-healing archangel grace. Sam questioned whether he would benefit from the advices of a therapist after what happened with his douche of a father, but Jack was doing fairly good and didn’t really showed any sign of anguish. He’d been told his whole life long, however short it was, that his father was a bad person, and now experienced it upfront. His brain just filed it as the proof that Sam, Cas and Dean were honest with him, and the bastard was dead anyway. He was free of becoming who he truly wanted to become, free of the threat of being used by someone he once thought truly loved him. That was the hard part to digest for the Nephilim. How and why would someone do that, and that love could become a deadly weapon. But surrounded by the care of Sam and Cas, he was able to thrive and do things for himself as he wanted them to be. He did miss his powers, at time, but the perspective of having so many choices ahead and being entirely free to consider each and every one of them while still benefiting from the benevolent advices from his closest kin was a fantastic position to be in. This rose a whole new set of parental challenges for Cas and Sam, but everyone was doing their best, and in the current situation, heavy with Dean’s absence, they were genuinely convinced they were doing as good as humanly and angel-y possible. 

So, no weird Nephilim flu. 

What, then, could justify the kid’s sudden permanent state of distraction ? Still new to this whole helicopter parenting thing, they both watched him for afar, trying to understand what on earth could the Nephilim possibly be up to. 

A few other concerning signs appeared over the course of the following day. First, he barely ate his breakfast, while he normally was a young Dean in the making, devouring enough bacon and eggs to break a record. He was also fairly silent, unlike his usual constant and uninterrupted flow of remarks and questions about the world he found so interesting in so many ways. And then, there was this enigmatic grin on his face at all times. And the confirmed kidnapping of Sam’s computer for good, to the point he was actually considering getting the kid his own. He, himself, used Dean’s, since letting Jack anywhere near around the biggest compiled porn data in the history of humanity was, quite simply, unimaginable. They successfully dodged that topic for now and were clearly aiming at keeping things that way as long as they could. The kid spent a lot of time on his own in his room, and while they both alleged he was watching the Netflix catalogue top to bottom, none of them really considered that, maybe, Jack’s internet activity was anything but solely based on binge-watching. 

Nephilim brain was a real thing. Jack was a fast learner, and extremely curious. Anything he questioned, he would eventually google, probably even before he’d ask his dad and Sam for it. There was a freedom in having the capacity to search for everything without getting judged in any way, shape or form. He knew they meant well, but to have this door to knowledge right next to him at all times was something he enjoyed more than he could tell. And google had answers for everything. But google also suggested he created an email address. And so, he did. And then, google taught him about twitter. And Jack wanted to know more. So he created an account. If at first he observed the people’s interactions, he eventually started posting his kind, naive, candid thoughts about the world, and had his first interactions outside of his family. And it was intoxicating, and frustrating, and happy, and joyful, and fun, and enraging at times, but all in all, he loved it more than he could tell. If google was the door to knowledge, twitter was a window on the world, the real world, the one that doesn’t know that monsters are real and that they’re always one step away from catastrophe. Maybe he would even find something to help Dean too ? Twitter gave him the feeling that everything was possible. It also gave him a scathing report on the state of the world, and it wasn’t a good place to live in, Jack thought. Being in the comfort of his room, surrounded by the most courageous of all people was definitely an easy way to question the universe. Everything seemed risk-free. But neither Sam nor Cas had any idea that Jack’s views on the world were far more advanced than they considered, and that with online friends would come something they had been escaping for a while now. 

And so, when, at diner, that evening, Jack was agitated, no one really knew what to make out of it. Sam and Cas waited for everyone to disperse to try and have a conversation with him and pierce his current mystery. It ended up with the three of them watching a movie with enough pop corn to feed a nation, facing the mind-numbing conclusion of how impossibly hard jumpstarting a discussion with your young adult adoptive son might be. Every time Sam thought he could, something in his mind screamed otherwise. Same for Cas. 

In the end, it was Jack who put it all to rest. 

And dropped quite the bombshell. 

-I think someone asked me on a date. 

Sam almost choked on his beer, while Cas literally felt like his grace went down a few stories and ended up in the bottom of his stomach. 

-A…Date ? Sam stuttered. 

-Yes. 

Sam paused the movie, unable to think straight. Cas looked like he was suffering from the first registered case of angel stroke.   
As for Jack…He was about to ask why their movie night was being interrupted, but understood that something was going off the rails by their blank expressions.   
Trouble was…He didn’t know what went wrong, and didn’t immediately registered that it came from his candid question. When he did, he had a slight expression of surprise, quickly followed by a world of confusion. 

Jack was afraid of talking more and make things worse. Sam couldn’t yet bring himself to ask any further question, even if a thousand of those were piling on a corner of his mind. Cas was completely lost and trying to gather out of his own, private library a guide on how to behave when your son is fast approaching the dating scene. No one dared to look at the other one.   
Bobby walked past the room and was about to enquire about their evening activity…But swiftly changed back his route and resumed his stroll back to the kitchen, witness to the scenic definition of « awkward ».   
Whatever those idjits are up to, I’ll know it soon enough. 

 

Unsurprisingly, it was Sam who broke that painfully weird stillness, once he figured out some kind of priority order in the things he needed to know, and overcame the vaguely distressing feeling of, maybe, having let the kid down enough so that he, obviously, went to get the answers to his wonders somewhere else than the dinner table. Yeah, we kind of suck at this.   
-Who…Erm, what…When…How did that happened ?   
Cas jumped at the opportunity of letting Sam handle it, and provided a very tamed form of mental support in a quick nod in his direction that almost entirely escaped Sam’s attention. Jack was looking at Cas, then Sam, then Cas and back and forth until he decided that the conversation was safe enough back again for him to talk. That very moment, it felt like he did something really really wrong and not knowing what precisely crossed that line he was trying so hard to follow after the Lucifer debacle was extremely problematic for him. Google didn’t told him he would get into hot waters when he created that account, and yet, instinctively, he knew that the issues was probably there. He had two options ahead of him : going soft and trying to circle the nature of that blossoming relationship without causing more jaws to be dropped, or going all in and telling the truth as it was.   
And clearly, lying wasn’t something Jack was either good at or trying to. Probably the only thing he got from his father, even if, clearly, for a so called non-liar, his father was, ironically, a pretty good master at not being honest, either partially or completely.   
There was one thing that sticked with Jack a long, long time after he died : how could he say that Sam was a bad person ? For Jack, it was one of the most defining moment of his messed up relationship, or lack thereof, with his biological father. The anger he felt over something so ridiculous confirmed his underlying impression that something was just off, and things went downhill from there. One stolen grace further, all the things Sam, Dean and Cas ever said about him were proven true, and Jack was left with the unease of what being a little too naive could cause.   
So, naked truth it was.   
-I met him on twitter.   
In a strangely synchronized chain of reaction, Sam and Cas both blinked thrice, cleared their throats and showed signs of discomfort in their seats. There was one part of that sentence none of them saw coming. Something they didn’t even consider, or even…Imagined. How could this happen to them, in their home, under their nose ? Had they been completely blind ? What could possibly attract Jack to that side of the spectrum ? Why would he do that ?   
Sam carefully temporized his state of shock in order not to cause more worries to a visibly distraught Nephilim.   
The kid is on twitter. Well, this sucks.   
-Jack, since when do you have a twitter account ?   
Cas started to feel restless but couldn’t bring himself to stand up. This was getting extremely confusing for him too.   
-What is a…Twitter ?  
Jack jumped at the opportunity to take the hand and ran to his room in a cloud of ecstatic comments in order to show Castiel about the blue bird. Sam and Cas looked at each other for a long second.   
-Did you know ? Sam muttered, still unable to digest half of the news.   
-I did not, did you ?   
Sam just nodded negatively before Jack rushed back, laptop in hands and put it in front of Cas while explaining in details what it meant and how much he loved it. There was no taming his enthusiasm, and Sam wasn’t sure he wanted to anyway. Jack was a ray of sunshine, and in those dark, troubled days, it couldn’t really hurt. 

The scenery was ten kinds of hilarious for the Winchester. Castiel was trying his best to keep up with the communicative joy and visible infatuation of the boy, but he had a hard time following. It took a while to teach the angel about texting, so Sam could only imagine how weird this new thing would be for him. While Jack was explaining - not very clearly, nor very patiently - all the ropes and what a hashtag was and that followers weren’t really meant to follow you everywhere, just what you are talking about, Sam attempted to make a list of all the new informations about Jack’s existence beyond what they shared day in, day out.   
Jack is on twitter.   
Jack seems to be pretty good at twitter.   
Jack loves twitter.   
Sam was aware of the dangers of social media and how destructive some behaviors could be behind the cover of anonymity, so, maybe he needed to make sure that Jack wasn’t bullied, or worse, a bully himself. He wouldn’t blame him. All of a sudden, and without any parental supervision, he’s given an access to things that can be intoxicating. Cas and him really needed to be more attentive to the unspoken parts of his life, and to the things he didn’t know how to ask about. They were to blame. They sort of kept the status quo and never really took the time to be open about the challenges he would meet and how to accompany him through all the doubts and questions about the world and about himself that would eventually come, one way or the other.   
So, twitter conversation : check. Sam knew he could manage it without looking too much of a dinosaur. 

But dates ? And specifically, dating another boy ? That was a whole other thing. He wasn’t surprised that Jack’s first relationship would end up being a gay one. He was, after all, part angel, and Castiel had always been adamant about their love of people, rather than genders. In a way, that made Jack bisexual by default, or something close to it. So, boy it is. As long as he was a nice boy and he didn’t make Jack suffer, Sam was happy about it.   
He stayed happy about it for a solid minute. And then an overwhelming wave of anxiety washed over him. What about heartbreaks ? Painful splits ? People disappearing ? Being hurt ? Jack wasn’t exactly emotionally mature, so, yeah, he could hurt someone’s feelings, but much, much, much worse, his feelings could get hurt too and this was impossibly hard to picture. Sam was the best example of the damages failed relationships could cause, and he wouldn’t inflict that kind of pain on anyone, let alone his own kin.   
There it was. The intolerable bite of knowing your child might and will get hurt, beyond the weirdness of their lives and the monsters out for blood, by simply…Living. It was obvious that they wouldn’t be able to protect him and to shield him from the world much longer, and that Jack deserved to be allowed to live a life as normal as possible. And with that came all the risks and all the pains and all the heartbreaks and all the damages that shape one’s personality and character…But this in no way meant he didn’t wish he could spare it to him. In this very case, Sam knew he would have to teach him about the rejection he might face shall that relationship prevail, and how a part of this world wasn’t as tolerant about love as they were. He took another sip of his beer before deciding that, clearly, this day would justify upgrading his drink to something stronger.   
He couldn’t suppress a weak smile as he poured himself, and the angel, a solid dose of whiskey, picturing how Dean would have reacted. Poor Jack would have been endlessly taunted, but Dean would probably behead a potentially unfaithful boyfriend and make them pay for any emotional harm caused. Dean wasn’t subtle in his way to care about people, and Jack was very high in Dean’s priorities. Hopefully, he still was. There was no way to tell whether something of Dean still existed as of this day, and Sam knew all too well how impossibly tough it was to beat an archangel occupation. Hope sounded like a luxury, these days, but it was one he could still afford. Giving up just wasn’t possible, and anticipating Dean’s reaction to Jack’s evolution was making Sam bittersweet about the current situation. Memories were comforting, but nothing was, paradoxically, harder yet nicer than thinking about their future. Together. With him, and Jack’s boyfriend.   
Oh.   
There was something else Sam didn’t exactly envisioned, and that could become a reality sooner than they thought, since Jack was fast in pretty much everything…Meeting his boyfriend ? « Hi, this is my adoptive angelic father, and my weird human uncle who taught me how to make the pencil fly, I’m Lucifer’s son, we hunt monsters, do you want some cranberry sauce with your turkey ? » For the first time in a long time, it dawned on him how complicated the situation was, and how easily things could go wrong.   
And because his mind had been dodging the question for a while, once all those questions were settled, or at least considered, one last thing jumped in and filled him with dread. Relationship aren’t always emotional…They’re also physical. Sam had two options before him : first, locking Jack down in the bunker forever and throwing the key away. Tempting. Very, very, very tempting. The other one was to talk with him about risks and consent and…Yeah, locking him down worked.   
When Castiel asked whether he could set up a twitter account, Sam decided it was time to have that long, long, long conversation about all those things. It lasted until late in the evening, between the three of them, and ended up on a common agreement from both parenting sides that Jack would meet this friend on his own, and that Sam and Cas would let him handle this alone. 

Sam and Cas discovered that night that terminological inexactitudes were incredibly handy in some situations.   
Sam told himself that spontaneously finding a friend on twitter that isn’t only from the same state, but also from a city less than a hour from Lebanon was extremely suspect and that he was simply being cautious.   
Cas told himself that Kelly would have wanted for him to be there, and that he had been forcibly removed from Jack’s life long enough not to disappoint her any further. 

That night, Sam dreamt about the very first time he truly fell in love. Strangely enough, for once, it was just a happy dream, removed from the subsequent grief and guilt.   
Just the good times. 

That night, Cas missed Dean. He felt his absence more than he usually did.   
Which was a lot. 

**

-Can you hear anything ? Cas whispered.   
Sam sighed in annoyance.   
-I can’t hear anything if you keep on talking. Keep typing…Or fake typing, they’re going to suspect something.   
Cas looked at the ceiling, tensed.   
-I’m not the genius who’s reading the newspaper backwards.   
-I don’t…Oh.   
Sam tried to smoothly turn the messy pages upside down, but ended up with an even messier collection of local news he couldn’t hide himself behind anymore. Instead, he grabbed a menu, but the single plastered page would not do a pretty poor job at concealing him.   
-What do you think they’re talking about ? Sam whispered, unable to keep his eyes away from the touching scene.   
-I’m trying to read his lips.   
Sam looked surprised.   
-You can read lips ?   
-Yes, Sam, I can read lips.  
Within five seconds, Sam tried to gather all the memories of things Cas wasn’t supposed to hear but understood anyway between him and Dean. Uh. Awkward.   
-You mean that all this time…  
-Yes.   
-And ? Sam timidly enquired.   
-And beside that you and Dean are idiots, it didn’t taught me anything I didn’t already know, Cas replied, deadpan, his eyes still very much fixed on the young couple two tables away. Sam was taken aback by Cas’s sudden use of snark.   
-Dean is rubbing on you.   
Cas looked at Sam and frowned, unable to decipher the real assumption behind that statement. 

On the other side of the coffee shop, Matt extended his hand until it reached Jack’s and if, at first, the Nephilim didn’t really know how to react, it felt so good he stopped asking himself questions about how he was supposed to behave and decided to opt for how he wanted to behave. And right now, holding Matt’s hand was what he wanted. So he did just that. And it felt even better. Two tables away, a very loud « awwwww » erupted from the two imbeciles Jack had spotted first thing when he arrived. Despite how embarrassing it was to know his dad and Sam were spying on his every move, he was touched by their overwhelming love and care, and he reluctantly admitted to himself that it was reassuring to know they were next to him should anything go wrong. Of course, he would never tell them that.   
Matt ended up switching seats and remain sat down next to Jack for the remaining time they spent on what had been one of the sweetest first dates Jack could possibly know. 

As he was getting ready to leave, Matt stole a first kiss that was very much given back to him. 

Jack wished that moment never ended. 

For now, at least, heartbreak was kept at bay, and second and third and fourth dates were being planned. 

Turns out, Sam thought, I was wrong. Matt looks as normal as it gets. 

Turns out, Castiel thought, Kelly was right. Nobody knows better what Jack needs than Jack himself.


End file.
